Radiation: Exposure and its Treatment

Written for a lay audience, yet useful for physicians, Brian Hanley’s Radiation Exposure and Its Treatment is intended to correct misinformation related to radiation, and teach how to treat it. The text is divided into thirty-two chapters in six sections: background, damage and symptoms, exposure treatment guides, self-treatment, physician treatments and experimental treatments. Chapter 10’s recommendations are specifically written for cancer patients.

I have little science background and don’t usually review science books, but I know Dr. Hanley from my writer’s group and so agreed to review this. I found the prose largely accessible and the concepts illustrated with graphics. Dr. Hanley is adept at use of examples and anecdotes to illustrate points. For instance, a squad of unprotected soldiers marched to ground zero immediately after an a-bomb test. They all got radiation sickness but had families with normal children before dying of cancer within 30 years.

The author points out some intriguing facts. For instance, we now know that even near-mortal doses of radiation do not cause mutations in children, something we used to think happened at quite low doses. And the ocean naturally contains enough U-235 to make nearly half a billion Hiroshima size a-bombs. Overall, this is a valuable book for anyone needing a reference on radiation exposure and treatment – or to anyone simply interested in the topic of radiation.